


Ficlets

by stackcats



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Jamie's enormous family - Freeform, M/M, malcolm is an artist, rentboy au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-25
Updated: 2014-04-04
Packaged: 2018-01-09 23:44:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1152245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stackcats/pseuds/stackcats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Archive of single-chapter ficlets that don't quite deserve their own posts. Mostly from tumblr prompts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Art Lessons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This ficlet started life as my prompt to benjycompson for "Sketchception" - that Malcolm is a talented artist. The prompt was deflected back at me, and we independently came to similar conclusions. Can you really see Jamie sitting still for an extended period of time? Me neither.

Emmy McDonald is curled up, almost asleep under a soft cashmere blanket, when her parents come to pick her up from her uncles. It's almost nine p.m., and Emmy's always dozy by nine, so Cara texts Jamie we're here rather than knocking. He answers the door almost immediately and puts a finger to his lips.

****

The house is pretty eclectic, but it was always going to be. The furniture is understated, designer, classy and contemporary, chosen and arranged by Malcolm, who seems to have a heck of an eye. You wouldn't think the raw wooden dining table would work with the white laminate and the splashes of bold colour, but Cara has to admit that it all blends seamlessly into something very effective, yet subtle. That ought to be a clue, really, but they all miss it.

****

The stuff in the house is mostly Jamie's. There are five hundred crappy pulp novels on the shelves, a thousand horror movies piled under and around the entertainment system, approximately thirteen sickly pot plants (Jamie thinks he's good with plants - he isn't), and Cara recognises a host of her great-nan's nick-knacks, inexplicably left to Jamie when she carked it last year, including her entire collection of ceramic owls - several of the creepier ones turned to face the wall. On the whole, you can feel where compromise has been made, and where a clash of personalities has been carefully embraced rather than allowed to create a dormant super-volcano that'll go off and destroy everything in a thousand-mile radius a few years down the line. She'd had her doubts about her Uncle Jamie’s, uh, _friend_ at first, but she has to admit things seem to be going very well for them.

****

"How'd it go?" Jamie asks, leading Cara through to the lounge where she tries to reconcile the angelic appearance of her sleeping daughter with the parent-teacher evening she's just been through.

****

"Not too bad. She's smart, but she doesn't like doing what she's told. Has she at least behaved herself for you?"

****

Jamie nods. "Sure. We had a food fight. I think I won."

****

"Oh. Good."

****

"What's that?" He points at the folder Cara brought in with her. She hasn't quite been able to let it go. It's... surprising. She shrugs and hands it to him.

****

"Emmy's art folder from this year. Have a look, if you like."

****

Jamie puts the folder on the coffee table and pulls out a few pieces, as Cara strokes her daughter's hair, encouraging her to awaken. She stirs and mutters a muffled protest.

****

"Hey, these are good, aren't they?" Jamie holds up a painting of a farm with sheep and cows and giraffes in the fields, a tractor in the distance, and a bright pink barn in one corner. "I mean, it looks... really sort of... properly good."

****

Cara nods. She knows exactly what he means. "Mrs Baker said it's unusual for a child her age to have such an eye for perspective. She certainly wasn't drawing like this last year."

****

"Smart kid," says Jamie, peering at a charcoal drawing of a horse in a hat and sunglasses, and then leafing through several pages of self-portraits, all of Emmy wearing crowns and princess hats, and one of her on a dragon's-hoard-like pile of treasure that includes gold, jewels, X-Box games, and Mars bars. "Ambitious, too."

****

Cara shrugs. "I don't really know what I'm looking at, but Mrs Baker basically called me a liar when I said she hasn't been going to extra art classes. The other kids are still on finger painting. Apparently art is the only subject that actually engages her. I just wish I knew where she's picking it up from."

****

There's a small, sleepy noise from the sofa, and Emmy reaches out a hand to tug the bottom sheet from the folder. "Uncle Malcolm showed me," she says, yawning and waving the sheet listlessly at Jamie.

****

"Naw," Jamie shakes his head at Cara's raised eyebrow. "Malc wouldn't know about this kinda farty shite." But he takes the page from Emmy and finds himself looking at a remarkable drawing of his own kitchen table with Emmy on one side, a figure that is recognisably Malcolm (wearing a purple and green jumper that exists only in Emmy’s imagination) on the other, and a colourful array of pens and paper on the table between them.

****

Jamie makes a noise of disbelief. “Is this a pretend picture?” he asks.

****

“That’s the day daddy fell out of the tree,” says Emmy, searching under the sofa for her shoes. Jamie remembers that day, a few months ago, when he’d driven Cara and her husband to the hospital after a gardening accident, and left Emmy with Malcolm, despite his protests. “Uncle Malcolm taught me drawing.”

****

“What about him?” Jamie points at the small giraffe beneath the table.

****

“Don’t be silly,” Emmy tells him. “That’s pretend. Uncle Malcolm said use my ‘magination. I like g’raffs.”

****

“That doesn’t sound like Malc.”

****

Emmy glares at him. “I’m not a liar. And he showed me proper colouring. And circles. Look.” She grabs a pen from the table, turns one of the self-portraits over, and draws a near-perfect circle on the back. “See? I can do it just like him.”

****

Cara looks utterly bemused. Jamie shakes his head.

****

“Malcolm’s not artistic. I’d know.”

****

“Tell ‘em,” says Emmy, her face breaking into a grin. Jamie looks round to see Malcolm in the doorway. He looks just about ready to bolt, but Emmy gives her shoes to her mother and flings herself at Malcolm’s legs, hugging him. He pats her on the head.

****

“You can’t draw,” says Jamie. “Can you?”

****

Malcolm shrugs. “A bit.”

****

“You taught her this?”

****

“You lot fu… you lot _dumped_ her on me that day. I didn’t know what else to do with her. She’s talented. Um. Get off. Please. Let go, go on.” Malcolm pries Emmy off his legs and nudges her back towards her mum.

****

Cara starts gathering the drawings back into the art folder, but Emmy snatches the one of her and Malcolm and gives it to Jamie.

****

“This should be on the wall,” she says, in a tone that brooks no argument. “Or in a frame,” she adds, after a moment’s thought. “Then when I’m famous you can sell it for a million pounds.”

****

***

****

Malcolm hates nothing, these days, more than he hates Jamie sulking. Oh, there are things he hates more on principle, the same old things as ever – Tories, the Daily Mail, Oliver Reeder (who emails him every few weeks when the flaccid little quim’s been at his mum’s chocolate liqueurs) – but in practical terms, it’s the sulking that really grates on his nerves.

****

Jamie took himself to bed at ten o’clock and switched off the light so that Malcolm had to stay downstairs in order to read, or risk an all-out fight. But around eleven, the shadows in the hallway shift and strengthen, telling him a light has been turned on upstairs. Malcolm shuts his book and listens to the sound of Jamie stomping into the bathroom. The pipes creak as the shower’s turned on, and if he moves now he should be able to get into bed and pretend to be asleep by the time Jamie emerges again.

****

It’s a trap. Of course it’s a trap. Malcolm’s half-way undressed when Jamie bowls into the bedroom and takes up his hands-on-hips, leaning forward, confrontational stance. It’s a lot less impressive when he’s naked and dripping water and soap onto the carpet.

****

“You,” Jamie growls, “are a lying liar who fucking lies. Why wouldn’t you tell me you’re a fucking _artist_?”

****

“Teaching a kid a couple of tricks doesn’t make-“

****

“Yeah, no – found that.” Jamie points at the bed. There’s a sketchbook on the pillow, battered and somewhat agoraphobic seeing as it’s spent most of its life shoved to the bottom of Malcolm’s bedside drawer, first in London and now here. It’s lying open on a study of next door’s tabby cat, sleeping, leaping, washing its face, and some exercises in drawing fur and stripes.

****

“And,” Jamie continues, waving an accusatory finger, “I didn’t even think you liked cats.”

****

Malcolm picks up the pad and turns the page, as if hiding the cat can clear his name. “So fucking what? Are you planning to over-react a bit more? ‘Cause you’d probably carry more clout if you put some fucking pants on.”

****

“Why’d you never show me?”

****

Malcolm can’t really answer that, because there isn’t a real reason, so he calls Jamie a few names instead and tries to hide the sketchbook. Jamie snatches it off him.

****

“And why,” he demands, flicking through the pages, “is this full of cats? And fucking squirrels? And the fucking _neighbours_? You’ve drawn that Welsh cunt over the road here – look! Are you fucking him? Are you fucking Rhys the fucking sandy-haired gimp? Is that what this is? A catalogue of things you love in secret? Cause I’m not fucking in it, am I? For fuck’s sake – you’ve drawn fucking _Nicola_ fucking _Bag Puss_ Murray here! But ye’ve not done a single one of me.”

****

“Oh, so this is all about your ego? Glad we got that cleared up. I’m going to bed.”

****

“It’s about you hiding something so-“

****

“Unimportant? Ah, go and wash your fucking balls for once. Go on, fuck off. And have a fucking shave, I’m getting sick of inner-thigh stubble burn.”

****

“I wouldnae worry about that, your cock’ll remain un-sucked forever unless I get an expla-fucking-nation for all this.”

****

“Oh, I’m sorry, have we stumbled into a parallel universe where I have to explain shit to you?”

****

“You – ah, bugger.” On the bedside table, Jamie’s phone vibrates and signals an incoming text. Ah, the age of technology, where the makings of a really good row can be thrown off-kilter by a couple of beeps.

****

“Cara,” he says, “she wants to know if ye’ll tutor the bairn. Once a week, sort of thing.”

****

“What?” Malcolm freezes with his (lovely, warm) pyjama shirt half-buttoned. “I – no. I was just trying to get the kid to sit down and shut up, that’s all.”

****

Jamie shrugs. “You’re doing it.”

****

“Fuck off.”

****

“I’m texting her back. Saturday morning, nine-thirty. Are ye gonnae disappoint that tiny wee lass who adores you, eh?”

****

“I’m going to fucking skin you,” Malcolm begins, but there’s not much fire there. Emmy does adore him, and the thing about Malcolm, the weird thing, is that he has an incredible soft-spot for people who like him. There aren’t many members of that select group - Jamie considers himself only a casual member, on the basis that like and love are not degrees on the same spectrum - but Emmy’s one of them. Being furious would be much easier if Malcolm hadn’t sort-of enjoyed spending a couple of hours with someone who wasn’t either Jamie or at least a little bit afraid of him. And if he hadn’t also enjoyed drawing with someone, even if they were seven years old and wanted to colour everything purple and vile green.

****

“Make it half ten,” he growls, getting into bed.

****

***

****

Jamie can, if undisturbed by alarm clocks, street noise, or Malcolm’s restlessness, sleep for a good fifteen hours per day, and he surfaces from sleep in a kind of warm, fuzzy defiance, usually with a snarl of what?!  just to remind the day what he has in store for it.

****

He does this just after eleven a.m. to find himself alone, but he’s more than used to that. The last time Malcolm stayed in bed past six was his birthday, when he declared he didn’t turn fifty-five until he actually got up.

****

Malcolm’s place isn’t empty, though. There’s a torn-out page from the sketchpad on his pillow, which Jamie grabs for. A page on a pillow is enough to give anyone a jolt of alarm, even though Jamie knows Malcolm is not the sort to leave notes.

****

It’s not a note; it’s a sketch. Jamie’s own face in scratchy black biro, nose pressed into the pillow, exactly as he’d been moments before, his hair tousled, his lips slightly parted, his eyelashes brushing his cheek - incredible detail present in what even Jamie can tell is a quick drawing.

****

The caption beneath it just says _“cunt”_.

****  
  
  



	2. Climbing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> theohgodblog asked: "can you write me a story about Jamie climbing a tree please he's deffo a tree climber". I think so too.

In principle, this was a great plan. The tree is in just the right place, along the detached side of the house so that he wouldn’t be seen from the road, and its sturdy branches reach all the way to the second storey, right outside the bathroom window.

 

The bathroom has a sash window with a conveniently broken lock, and Jamie has a square of metal the size of a credit card, a butter knife, and a physique just small enough to fit through the gap.

 

It all sounds like it ought to work out fine, barring getting caught half-way through, but he’s got several creative excuses lined up in case of that.

 

In _practice_ , however, Jamie hasn’t climbed a tree in about twelve years. Last time he did anything like this was when Jenny next door would signal him by tapping on the wall that separated their houses - and, conveniently, her bedroom from his. He’d climb out onto his roof, shimmy down the drain pipe half-way until he could reach out and carefully jump and grab the branch and clamber up and round and down onto the flat roof beneath her window. The window would be open, and there would be Jenny, who’d had tits since they were thirteen but hadn’t let Jamie anywhere near them until they were both almost seventeen and the anticipation had all but killed him, slipping out of her nightie in the moonlight.

 

Things have changed a fair bit since then.

 

This is a good climbing tree with lots of sturdy branches, trunk knots, and off-shoots to grab onto. He used to be up and down trees like this all day, though admittedly he’d be wearing trainers or his bare feet, not these fuck-awful black work shoes. He pauses, panting, with one arm hooked around a higher branch, as he shuffles the shoes off. He looks around, wriggling socked toes against rough bark, and decides the only safe thing to do is drop his shoes in the flower bed and retrieve them in the morning.

 

They thud almost soundlessly onto the soil. Jamie looks up. Not much further, he can _do_ this. He once climbed to the top of the biggest oak tree on his aunt’s farm, which none of his brothers or cousins had ever been able to do - _and_ he’d got down again without more than the usual superficial scratches. He focuses, channels his twelve-year-old self, and pulls himself up onto the branch above.

 

The next branch is a bit springy, but if he can just get his feet onto it - likeso- he can hold onto the one above and shuffle along until it’s just one careful stretch - hands first, then feet following - onto the sturdy branch outside the bathroom window. The bathroom light is out, and he can see the door is closed. Perfect.

 

Jamie balances there, grinning in the dark. He’s still got it, of _course_ he fucking has.

 

He slides the flat piece of metal under the window frame and cracks it open just enough to get the knife in, and then he can push the window up all the way. He grabs the upper window frame and slides his legs in first, ending up with his arse in the sink, but that’s okay. He’s in and safe, which is good, because the first hint of dawn is touching the horizon and he’s running out of time. His feet find the floor, and he quickly shuts the window and flicks the light on.

 

Shoved into the cupboard beneath the sink, where his own few toiletries are stashed (allowing her free reign of every surface and the wall cabinet) is a sports bag with a pair of shorts and a soft t-shirt, the sort he wears to bed. He changes, shoves his day clothes into the bag, and hides it again, behind his spare soap and aftershave and half a dozen toilet rolls. Just in case, he flushes the toilet and runs the taps, then quickly checks himself in the mirror.

 

His neck - that’s always the trouble, Malcolm always goes for his _neck_. Sure enough, there’s redness there beneath his jaw, but thankfully no fucking teeth-marks unlike last time. He rubs the spot - it’s a bit sore. He can nick some of that concealer stuff if it hasn’t gone down in the morning, there’s enough of it around she’ll never notice if he uses a tiny bit.

 

He opens the door at the exact same moment as the bedroom light goes on across the hall. The door opens and Annie blinks at him. She’s wearing the ridiculous Primark duck-print flannel pyjamas she wears when it’s cold like tonight, or as her _something more comfortable_ when she wants to tease him. She smiles sleepily.

 

“There you are. My turn. Safe to go in?”

 

“Oh. Aye, love.”

 

He gets a kiss on the neck as she brushes past.

  
Jamie twists his wedding ring, tells himself that guilt is for simpering cuntfarts, that he’s just _tired_ , and _fucked out_ , and it’s not his _fault_ , and gets into bed.


	3. physical fights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anon asked for "Jamie x Malcolm, physical fights"

They’ve been going for a while now.

 

Malcolm’s head hits the floor and sparks crackle in front of his eyes. He’s roaring and cursing and promising hot-blooded murder in a hundred improbable ways, while Jamie - for _fuck’s sake_ \- Jamie’s eyes just get bigger and wilder, his snarl grows nastier, his nails dig deeper in Malcolm’s skin, and they roll - must be Malcolm who forced that - and Jamie’s back’s crunching over the shards of broken glass, and he’s howling, furious, kicking and punching, but Malcolm’s got him pinned, and he does the only thing he can do to keep his advantage and sinks his teeth into Jamie’s chest. Damp shirt fills his mouth, and Jamie’s calling him eight kinds of cunt, and he can taste two-pence coins, and the _burn_ …

 

A flare shoots up Malcolm’s spine. He jolts, his entire body flinching, arching _into_ the pain. Jamie’s hand is visible in the distant left of Malcolm’s vision, a few greying hairs between his fingers, and Malcolm grins, unclenches his jaw, braces himself but is still bowled over and left blinking by the elbow that crunches the side of his head.

 

Jamie’s on him. Malcolm grabs hold of his arms, and there’s a horrible stalemate where they’re spitting in each other’s faces, each willing the other to break, Malcolm almost wanting to give in just to feel Jamie’s hands on him again. He doesn’t have to wait long - Jamie’s small but strong and he knocks Malcolm’s arms aside and gets both hands around his throat.

 

Malcolm’s knee connects with Jamie’s bollocks, but Jamie’s not quite made like everyone else, and instead of rolling over in a whimpering heap, he bares his teeth and lunges forwards and, eyes watering and bloodshot, pulls Malcolm up by his tie and slams him back against the hardwood floor. Malcolm tries the knee again, but it’s no good - Jamie’s own knee gets in the way, and the collision of bone-on-bone makes both of them scream, but it’s still not enough. Jamie scratches and bites, Malcolm gets in a couple of vicious punches that would disarm a sane man (or a rabid badger), and when the floorboards become flecked and smeared with blood neither of them could say if it was theirs or his.

 

Nights like this, it doesn’t matter what starts it. Could be anything - the wrong tone, the wrong look, an accidental nudge, cigarette smoke in Malcolm’s face, a misaimed word about Jamie’s wife or his sisters or his stubble or his _smoking_ or his fucking stupid _coat_ …

 

Doesn’t matter. They won’t remember, and anyway, it’s never really about the thing that sets them off.

 

Malcolm regains the upper hand, yanks Jamie upright, and tries to throw him at a wall, but Jamie hooks a leg around Malcolm’s knee and they crash into the sideboard. Things fall and break, unheeded, as Malcolm loses his balance and Jamie rolls them over and down, and _bites_ him, hard, on the jaw. Malcolm hits him on the side of the head, and Jamie rolls off, dazed, blood and saliva across his face, his shirt torn and stained. Malcolm tries to push himself up with the intention of lunging at Jamie, but his arm buckles and he collapses, lungs burning, breath coming in short, sharp gasps, the back of his skull hitting the floor for a final time.

 

He lies there, half expecting Jamie to land on him, grab him, kick his ribs in. He almost wants it, the pain, the catharsis, wants to let go, give up every last piece of himself, vent the energy, the fury and frustration, bring it all crashing down in rough shards, and he wants to feel Jamie do the same.  

 

But it’s done. Jamie’s a groaning heap to his right. Malcolm can see him out of the corner of his eye, he’s breathing - hell, he’s _bitching_ , under his breath, about Malcolm’s left-hook - and that’s all he needs to see. He lies still and pants for breath, listens to his heart thundering, and waits for thepeaceto sink in.

 

It comes with the brush of Jamie’s fingers against the back of his hand. He turns it, lets Jamie stoke his palm, before catching his fingers and brushing his thumb across Jamie’s knuckles.

 

Jamie pulls his hand away. Malcolm rolls onto his side, reaches out across the scuffed floorboards, finds the hem of Jamie’s shirt and tugs it, pulls it up, gropes for skin, for anything at all.

 

They’re the only ones who can take each other apart like this. The only ones who can handle each other, who can be allowed to see how deep it all goes. The thing about Jamie, the important thing, is that he’s seen Malcolm at his worst - so much worse than anything anyone else ever glimpses - and he’s still here.

 

Jamie’s foot strokes the back of Malcolm’s knee. Fingers stroke a gentle pattern over his ribs.

 

They’re the only ones who can take each other apart. And they’re the only ones who can put each other back together again.


	4. Serial Killer AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That post kept appearing on my tumblr dash, over and over. You know the one - "everyone else wants coffee shop au and I'm just like serial killer au omg". Yeah, that one.
> 
> So - Malcolm x Jamie serial killer AU, because clearly this is what the world wants. With an apology to Iain Banks.

Jamie’s specialty is the detail of the job itself; the precise amount of pressure, the combination of different techniques, and how best they might be applied to the variety of personalities they have to deal with in their day-to-day lives. He knows how people tick, and he knows, particularly, how to make them stop ticking quite abruptly. 

He might look (and yes, okay,  _act_ ) like a diminutive fucking psychopath, in the literal sense of the word as defined by the DSM, but actually Jamie is very careful when it comes to the practicalities. Diligent, even, to the point that he’s responsible for covering their tracks. He also does feel a great deal of empathy for these poor sods - it’d hardly be worth the effort if he couldn’t feel, on some level, what they feel, couldn’t understand their pain or comprehend their desperation when they look into his eyes and realise, finally realise, what is happening to them. His heart races along with theirs, and soars with the knowledge that  _they all fucking deserve it._

Malcolm, though, he’s different. He’s a big-picture kind of man. While Jamie’s having fun in the middle of the workshop, Malcolm’s sitting at his desk at the back, hard at work on their next adventure, with his charts and his schedules, with the computer where Sam sits during the day (not now, never  _now_ ) and hacks the beejesus out of their targets and their targets’ PAs, and their wives and husbands and lovers and dentists and dog groomers and… Sam (bless her wicked little heart) accesses and compiles the data, and Malcolm interprets it, and from there he selects their target and plans their every move. 

It’s been this way for twelve months now, and Jamie never, ever wants to go back.

The police haven’t got a fucking clue. That’s not just the line Jamie gives Malcolm, it’s the truth - they’re so far off, it’s not even funny. It took them months to figure out the first deaths were connected, and with no DNA evidence (Jamie is fucking  _obsessive_ about that), and no bodies (they’re all here, but  _here_ is fucking  _nowhere_ ) and with Malcolm already legally dead himself, a fucking tragic prison suicide, there’s not very much for the fucking fuzz to go on. Jamie’s not delusional, he knows nothing is foolproof, but they’ve got time yet, if they continue to be as careful as they have.

Besides, it’s not about getting away with it; it’s about getting the job done. They’re doing what  _needs_ doing, what every other pussy in the country would condemn as _sick_ and  _wrong_ , but which will benefit every last one of them, and their children for generations to come.

After all, if you want to make a fair and liberal society you’ve got to murder a few Tories, right?

Jamie carefully peels off his gloves and drops them into the canvas bag, pulls the bag’s ties, and takes it over to the incinerator. Behind him, something whimpers, and he glances back over his shoulder at the shape handcuffed to the plastic scaffold.

"He’s tough as yer granny’s cunt," he says, grinning at Malcolm.

"Yeah, yeah. Just fucking finish it. If I have to listen to that greetin’ much longer I’m gonnae drink that fucking bleach myself. Get it done, love."

Jamie stands behind Malcolm’s chair and rubs his shoulders. Plenty of tension there. Too long sitting at a desk, staring at screens and whiteboards, too much frowning and too much second-guessing, same as always. Jamie squeezes gently, tries to rub away some of the tightness - he’s never been any good at a proper massage, but Malcolm always appreciates his touch, and he sighs, brushes his own fingers against Jamie’s as he sags a little in his chair.

"He’ll no’ last much longer," Jamie murmurs, pressing his lips against Malcolm’s neck. "What’re you doing?"

"Just stab him in the fucking throat. How can ye stand listening tae that?"

"It’s comforting."

"You’re a fucking beast, MacDonald." But there’s a smile on Malcolm’s lips. Jamie doesn’t think he entirely minds the noises either, but he walks back to the middle of the room, picks up a long, needle-like blade from the black cloth roll, and shoves it without any ceremony through the neck of the Minister for Work and Pensions, who ceases his groaning more or less immediately. Blood pulses and patters onto the canvas sheets beneath their feet. 

Malcolm is up out of the chair, and Jamie takes the opportunity to grab at his arse. Strange how he feels extra frisky on these occasions. Malcolm gives him a quick kiss, but he’s still in work-mode, and he’s standing back to look at his board, tapping the end of a dry erase marker against his chin. 

There are quite a few names on the board. Most of them are crossed off. One stands out, circled in the middle of the board, written in larger letters but just two single initials, a fucking stupid moniker for a fucking _cunt_ of a man.

Malcolm looks at him, and there’s more life in his eyes than Jamie’s seen there in years.

Jamie doesn’t know how this ends. There aren’t very many options, after all. The only thing he does know, the dictating fucking mandate of his life, is that he’s never leaving this man’s side again. So long as it ends with him and Malcolm, he’ll take it head-on and bellowing Motherwell-forged defiance, come Hell or oblivion or whatever’s waiting for them in the wing.

But first…

Malcolm takes the lid off his pen and scratches a couple of thick lines under those two initials. Jamie’s fingers twitch at his sides, and another kiss from Malcolm makes his blood crackle through his veins with electric heat.

Malcolm says, “It’s time, love.”

And it is. Jamie knows it too. It’s time


	5. Porn Star AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Malcolm/Jamie Porn star AU.
> 
> The blame for this lies ENTIRELY with scottishwolves and thesummoningdark, who have tried to pass some of the blame to luxurioussortofdevil.
> 
> This is probably best thought of as 'imaginary roles played by Peter Capaldi and Paul Higgins' than 'Malcolm makes porn movies and Jamie stars in them' because they would never do those things and it's therefore pretty OOC.

The set’s alive with activity, people running around in headphones, or carrying remarkably large make-up pallets, or having arguments in corners, people hauling bits of set here and there, and dragging costume trolleys, people with folders of paper and people with unidentified bits of electrical equipment. The cameras are more-or-less in place, the lights are being tested, the sound bloke is having a fight with a small woman with a keyboard, and in the middle of it all is Sam, the director, the calm and reassuring pillar of sanity in the middle of it all.

 

Jamie makes his way towards her, and the crowds part for him, people make way for him, eager young things who don’t know better chirp _Hi Mr MacDonald!_ after him, but he ignores them and makes his beeline for his director. She’s tall, beautiful, and dressed in a business suit. She’d easily pass for a lawyer or a politician, but the smile she bestows on Jamie betrays – somehow, Jamie can’t pin it down, but it’s there – her former career as a Madame. The Boss chose her for her directorial talents, of course, but also for her care for those working for her. Jamie, in this new line of work, has become one of her little birds, and she habitually adjusts his collar for him, smooths down his tie. He’s not in costume yet. This is how he always dresses, first day on set.

 

They’re doing something new. They’re _always_ doing something new, it’s partially why Jamie’s so devoted to Sam and their boss. It’s always thrilling, always a little bit dangerous. Feature-length films, well-written, the erotic tension constructed carefully, the first sex scene never sooner than twenty or thirty minutes in. Boring, some would call it, and so would Jamie if he was a viewer. Not his thing at all, just show him the tits and the cock and the cumshot, and he’s done… but there’s a market for this stuff, a huge market. Women, yes, but men too, sophisticated men, arty-farty faggoty types most likely. It’s fine, whatever – so long as people are buying it, they’ll keep making it. And Jamie likes making it. He’s well-paid ( _extremely_ well-paid) and he’s looked after, and the girls are happy and he’s never seen any signs they’re being exploited. Some of them are even actresses with history on the stage, like him, which makes the finished product all the more polished and classy.

 

Sam grins at him, that cheeky, well-educated grin. “Are you ready for scene one?”

 

“Yeah, but these fucks aren’t. What’s Frankie doing with all that cabling?”

 

“He’ll be ready. We’ve got time.” Another flash of that smile, and Sam touches his arm. “Boss wants to see you. He’s in his office.”

 

“He’s here?”

 

“He’s waiting. Make him happy.”

 

Jamie’s heart flutters, and he makes for the corridor, and the stairs, and stops outside the boss’ office. Knocks on the door, opens it, peers around.

 

He’s sitting at his desk, long legs crossed at the ankles, a script and a biro in hand. He’s always making last-minute changes, as is his prerogative. Drives the other actors nuts, but Jamie’s seen the best lines, the best scenes, come out of the boss’ pen about five minutes before Sam yells _action_. He’s engrossed, and doesn’t notice the door opening.

 

“Malc?” Jamie edges inside, closes the door behind him, and grins, big-eyed and sultry, a face that never fails to draw attention.

 

Malcolm looks up, and here’s the best bit – he bites, compulsively, at his bottom lip, just briefly, but it’s enough for Jamie to want to launch himself at the man. He exhibits what he wants on record as some very strong restraint.

 

Malcolm Tucker is the man with the plan, the mastermind of this whole enterprise, it’s his money, they’re his scripts (for the most part – someone else does the actual _writing_ ) and they are, every one of them, his people. He looks a class act, tall and grey-haired and severe, but Jamie knows better, and so does Sam. To the rest of them, he’s an entrepreneur. To Jamie, he’s…

 

“Jamie.” There’s a roughness in his voice already, and he couldn’t be more obvious if he tried – Malcolm’s been thinking about him. That’s more than fine. Malcolm’s been away for over a year, since their last production, back with his wife and his daughter, just as Jamie has been, at the other end of the country. Jamie hasn’t _stopped_ thinking about him.

 

Malcolm gets up, and Jamie darts across the office, ready to just fucking _grab_ the man, but Malcolm’s hands come to rest either side of Jamie’s neck, and he studies him, like he always does when they’ve been away.

 

“Ageless,” he mutters, brushing a thumb across Jamie’s lips, which part, tongue flicking out, but Malcolm’s not finished.

 

Sam says that Jamie is Malcolm’s _muse_ , that every story is constructed with Jamie in mind – Jamie’s face and his voice and his arse and his cock, _his_ , not some generic, faceless actor, not just anybody. And it’s true that the very best scripts are the ones where he’s being fucked by an older man, the ones he supposes are Malcolm’s fantasies. The one where Jamie’s stranded on an island with a grey-haired man, the one where he falls in love with his business partner, the one where he worked for a powerful politician who lets the country fall to bits over the loss of him, and this newest one, the story they’re about to start filming, where Jamie’s character leaves his wife and…

 

Just fantasies, all of it, obviously. Jamie fits some ideal, his appearance must offer some inspiration, which is nice, as an artist it’s incredible, but it’s all just make-believe.

 

Except, occasionally, it isn’t.

 

Malcolm kisses him, lightly, just a touch of lips that fills Jamie with heat. “All ready to start filming?”

 

“Oh aye.” Jamie strains forward, aching for a proper kiss, but Malcolm’s still got a hand on his neck, just watching him. He’s remarkably strong.

 

“This one, darling, this one is gonnae fucking _make_ us. I’ll tell you later about some of the deals I’ve been spinning. We’re talking theatrical release. Up and down the country. We’re talking millions.”

 

Jamie gasps, but it’s nothing to do with the _millions_. He doesn’t want millions. It’s all about Malcolm’s hand, Malcolm’s fingers stroking his inseam, palm nudging his balls. He’s already hard, which is _ridiculous_ , but he can’t help it. Malcolm’s _his_ muse too – when he’s covered in make-up and surrounded by people barking orders, and the other actor is yawning and checking the time, when it’s hot and the lights are dazzling and it all feels a bit too much like work, the thought of Malcolm will always get him ready for the scene. All he wants right now, in this instant, is a fucking _kiss_ , and Malcolm knows it, and he’s toying with him, but this is not a one-sided game. If Malcolm wanted someone to swoon and submit and fawn over him, he could have anyone he desired.

 

Jamie lets Malcolm flirt a little longer, brushing their mouths together then pulling away, fingers teasing at Jamie’s belt, gently tugging at his shirt but not untucking it. He’s the biggest tease on the planet, and Jamie would be a liar if he said he didn’t love it, but there are limits to his patience, and those limits are not high.

 

Jamie knocks the hand off his neck, lunges, and grabs hold of the lapels of Malcolm’s black suit jacket, drags him forwards into a kiss, bites at his lips, shoves tongue against tongue, presses the entire length of his body against Malcolm’s, and accompanies it all with an entirely unscripted feral growl. Malcolm gets a handful of Jamie’s hair and yanks him back, then shoves him, hard, against the desk. Jamie sprawls back against it, sending paper flying, and before he can regroup Malcolm is on him, gripping his hair again, the too-long curls right at the back of his neck, tilting his head back to kiss his throat, Malcolm’s other hand expertly undoing Jamie’s belt. Jamie gets a leg around Malcolm’s hip, lets the desk take his weight as he arches back, putting on a bit of a show for his boss, who has never failed to appreciate his talents. Malcolm tugs Jamie’s tie loose, shoves his shirt up, runs cool hands over hot flesh, and ducks his head, finding Jamie’s nipple with his mouth through the fabric of his shirt. Jamie yelps, and if anyone outside the office hears him – who cares? They probably all know…

 

Malcolm teases for a moment, then shoves Jamie’s shirt up, still half-buttoned, so he can tug at his nipple with his sharp front teeth. Jamie chokes on a low and desperate moan, but Malcolm releases him, slides his hand low, and just as he’s pressing his palm over Jamie’s cock, he _bites_ just beneath his nipple.

 

Jamie’s heard the rumours – that Malcolm started off his career as a rent boy and networked himself into some high class agencies, that he once worked _for_ Sam before moving into the adult film industry. Malcolm lets people go ahead and believe whatever they want, but Jamie suspects it isn’t true – the man’s talented, but he’s _impulsive_ , there’s too much fire in him, a whore is supposed to be able to follow instructions, and Malcolm is not an _instructions_ kind of person. Not unless he’s giving them.

 

He bites again, sucks and tongues at Jamie’s flesh, leaving a mark that the camera won’t hesitate to pick up. It’ll be there on the screen for everybody to see, proof of Jamie’s ownership by this man. There’s a clique of fans who speculate, on the internet fan boards, what the lovebites mean, who might be leaving them there as a link, as Jamie moves between stories, between characters; and there was also the conversation Jamie had to have with his wife after she saw the second film. He tells anyone who asks that the make-up department is responsible.

 

Once Malcolm’s satisfied with his work, he kisses Jamie, properly this time, strokes his jaw and his hair, kisses him deep and hard, pushes his body close and moves their hips together. Jamie’s knees come up, legs wrapping around Malcolm’s waist, arms around his shoulders, the desk the only thing keeping him steady as Malcolm ruts against him. Malcolm nuzzles at his throat, and Jamie grips him tight, ready for the hot flash of teeth again as Malcolm bites down beneath his ear.

 

When Malcolm breaks away, Jamie’s left hot, red-faced, open-mouthed and panting.

 

“Turn round, love.”

 

Jamie’s not exactly good at following instructions either, but he makes a significant exception for any issued by Malcolm – not that it’s a conscious decision. Not one made by his upstairs head, anyway. He gets his feet back down on the floor and turns to brace himself against the desk. Malcolm tugs Jamie’s trousers down over his arse, brushes his fingertips against his tailbone before Jamie hears Malcolm unzip, and the drawer beside him slides open, its contents at the ready.

 

Malcolm grabs his hips and rubs up against him, Jamie’s legs sliding as far apart as possible, but the old tease takes his time, kisses Jamie’s back, his neck, rocking his hips just a little _too_ slowly. Jamie bucks back, needing pressure, fully aware how horrendously fucking _wanton_ he looks like this, but Malcolm doesn’t ever let him go unrewarded. A nimble thumb slides between his cheeks, presses against tight muscle, rhythmic, almost massaging, and Jamie shouts out loud, drops his forehead to the desk and lets out a litany of short, sharp curses. Behind him, Malcolm physically shivers.

 

“Fuck’s sake, Jamie… fucking _flawless_ wee whore…”

 

Within Jamie’s reach is a heavy glass ashtray, and if anybody else had called him a whore they’d be getting that ashtray right in the face. Coming from Malcolm, though… he doesn’t need to think about those implications. Doesn’t need to think about anything, not with Malcolm reaching into the drawer for condom and lube. He likes it when he gets to do the prep work, likes to slide the condom down over Malcolm’s length and watch his eyelids flutter, likes to reach behind himself, get himself ready, but time isn’t exactly _not_ a factor here. Sam knows the score, but if she has to pay people to hang around while Malcolm has his way with their star actor, she’ll start doing the eye-roll thing and forget to include them in the coffee order.

 

Malcolm’s always sparing with the lube, but he pushes into Jamie slowly, carefully, responding as Jamie tightens and then relaxes beneath him. There’s a moment’s pause when he’s deep inside, and then – Jamie’s knuckles flush white as he grips the desk – Malcolm starts moving _fast_. Jamie shouts out loud, wordless syllables of pure pleasure that become even more nonsensical when Malcolm’s long fingers close around Jamie’s cock, moving in a quick rhythm to match his thrusts.

 

Jamie’s famous on set for his stamina, Sam affectionately referring to him (or his cock, he’s never been sure) as Mr Reliable, and he’s always received compliments from the supporting actors on his ability to stay, as it were, focussed for as long as needed. Malcolm ruins everything. It’s what he does best. A dozen or so pumps of his hand, and Jamie’s falling apart beneath him, cursing through one of those deep, intense orgasms that always leaves him dizzy and glowing afterwards. Malcolm’s desk takes his load, but it’s not as if that’s never happened before, and Malcolm continues to fuck him until he’s prone and panting and completely limp across the desk.

 

Jamie calls him a cuntwart when he pulls out. The condom lands, empty, on the desk beside him.

 

“We’re not finished.”

 

Malcolm’s voice is hard and rough, and by the time Jamie gets himself upright and turned round, Malcolm’s sat back in his deep leather chair, stroking himself, his eyes bright and sharp with lust. Jamie doesn’t even have to _think_ about it, he’s down on his knees with Malcolm’s cock in his hand before he’s even caught his own breath. Malcolm strokes his hair, and Jamie flashes him the biggest wide-eyed, most dishevelled grin he can summon.

 

“Put it,” Malcolm growls, “in your fucking mouth _now_.”

 

Jamie wants nothing else in the world. He obeys, lips sealing around hard flesh, his eyes closing as he moves quickly, trying to find the pace Malcolm had set a few minutes ago and not become overwhelmed by the taste and the scent and the _feel_ of him. Malcolm’s grip on his hair tightens, and he’s tugged forwards, forced to brace himself against Malcolm’s thighs. The older man has little to no restraint, hips bucking up, but Jamie’s good at this, he can take it, and when Malcolm comes, fucking Jamie’s mouth hard and fast, he swallows everything down.

 

There’s calm for a few moments. Jamie’s head rests against Malcolm’s thigh, and Malcolm strokes his hair, and the only sounds are Malcolm’s ragged breathing and the odd shout or clatter from the studio. But there’s work to be done. Jamie pulls up his trousers, does up his shirt and his belt and his tie, and watches Malcolm tidy himself up too, though he’s apparently uninclined to move from his chair just yet.

 

“Take that and show Sammy.” Malcolm waves a hand at the desk, where the script he was annotating still lies, looking somewhat dishevelled. Jamie thinks he might have drooled on it a bit.

 

“What have you changed?”

 

Malcolm shrugs. “He still leaves his wife, but he’ll go back to her. He always will.”

 

Jamie flicks through the pages. Not much of the dialogue has changed, not quite enough to annoy Sam, and not until the final act. Plenty of time to work it in.

 

“It’s a tragedy now, then?”

 

“Yeah. Maybe. What do you think?”

 

“We can still improvise, right?”

 

Malcolm doesn’t say anything to that. Jamie rolls up the script and tucks it into his pocket.

 

“You’re a fucking star,” Malcolm murmurs, touching Jamie’s hip.

 

“I know.”

 

Jamie flashes him another grin, kisses him on the neck, and heads out for the dressing room.

 


	6. Rentboy AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a god-damned rentboy AU. just something v. quick and kind of porny.  
> AUs are very good to keep me writing when I'm generally too busy to work on longer plots. That's my excuse and I'm sticking with it.

It's all about discretion. It turns out you can't just buy sex, you can buy silence too, and silence is good - the list of people Malcolm does not want to find out about this is, in 1988, just over 5.1 billion names long, but right at the top is his fiancee, then his dad, who he's pretty sure will still hunt him down and hit him with something, and then his mum, who will be  _disappointed_. You can't trust some guy from a club not to spot you in Tesco with the woman you're supposed to marry and start waving at you in the jam aisle, but you can trust these guys.

He's got a key to his cousin's place, and he's supposed to be looking after it, watering the planets etc, and he  _is_ doing all that. No one ever said "don't fuck prostitutes here please", so it's probably fine, right?

It usually goes the same way. Pick the guy up, take him to the house, quick, hard fuck, hand over the cash, water the sodding plants, go home.

Tonight, things are going differently. For a start, he can't look away from this boy's  _face_. 

It all tumbled out of control very quickly when Malcolm shut the front door and the boy, who just gave his name as  _J_ , grabbed the front of his shirt and kissed him. Malcolm shoved him off, what the  _fuck_ did he think - ? but was met with wide, blue eyes filled with genuine lust. So he did the only thing he was physically capable of doing and grabbed the boy by the collar, and shoved him up against the wall, and kissed him back, and sank to his knees, and made the lad sweat and swear and whimper helplessly, made him come and swallowed it down and kissed him again.

That was some time ago. Now Malcolm is flat on his back on his cousin's bed, sweat soaking the sheets, one hand scrabbling at the headboard for something to anchor him as the lad, J, bucks and writhes and shouts obscenities with Malcolm's cock deep inside him. Malcolm's completely out of control and he knows it, this is  _insane_ , it's not supposed to - J is the worst fucking rent boy he's ever had, the least professional, the most  _incredible_  - 

Malcolm grabs hold of the lad's hips, gathers him up, and rolls them both so he's on top, and J lets out a whimpering sigh as Malcolm sinks deep into him. Malcolm bites his throat, can't help it, just a quick flash of teeth, and J arches, his entire back coming up off the bed, hands grabbing at Malcolm's hair and shoulder and trying to get him to do it again. So he does, teeth nipping at salty skin.

And he fucks the lad deep and slow and fucking  _intense_ until he makes the touch-starved wee bastard come again.  


J's spent but he's not done, there's a degree of professionalism there as he grabs Malcolm's arse and squeezes and encourages him to  _fuck_. Which Malcolm does, faster now, part of him wanting to see if he can make J break character, if he'll get bored or annoyed, but he's wearing his bleeding wee heart on his sleeve and everything just seems so  _genuine_ that Malcolm's angry himself, but the anger takes a back seat with J kissing his neck and scratching his back and  _squeezing_  tight around him, and he finishes in a swearing, sweating, disgraced heap on top of this ridiculous, infuriating man.

And that's when the anger sinks in. He didn't want this, didn't fucking  _ask_ for this, he's not  _paying_ for someone to look at him like this, to touch his chest as he gets his breath back and drop a kiss to his throat, and...

He shoves J away.

"I suppose you charge extra for the fucking performance?"

"What?" the boy looks dazed, but it doesn't last long. He shakes his head. "You calling me a fucking cheat? Just what we agreed, okay? What's the-" he looks up at the wall clock, and suddenly tenses up. "Fuck. I've got to go, where's the cash?"

Malcolm pays up, and watches the lad dress, and watches him run from the room. The front door slams. He thinks of Kim, who agreed to marry him but is making him sign a pre-nuptial agreement first, and he thinks of his wee sister, who he's tried to shield from this kind of sleezy... and he thinks of his parents, who'd probably never speak to him again if they knew what he did every Thursday night, but they all, all of them, especially Kim, seem so far away and unreal right now.

He gets up, and showers, and dresses, and waters the plants, which seem (especially the spider plant in the hallway) to be  _judging_ him. But the ritual of looking after the place, feeding the fish, giving the photo frames a quick dust, checking everything is still locked up, brings him slowly back to reality. 

He should phone Kim. Make something up about a bird that got in the house, or a particularly sad-looking yucca, explain what the fuck is taking him so long. He trots into the hallway and picks up the receiver, and then freezes.

On the notepad beside the phone, someone has written, in spiky handwriting, the name  _Jamie,_ and below it a phone number.   


And that's how Malcolm's life as he knows it, as he's planned it out, comes to an end.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another little piece of rentboy AU.

The thing is, Malcolm’s always been in control before. He’s good at it. It’s what he _does_ , how he copes with the world being, as it quite obvious is, utterly fucking insane.

 

He first properly got the universe under his thumb when he was sixteen. That’s when he realised his dad was no longer bigger than him, that he could shout louder than his old man, that he could, if not actually intimidate the violent old bastard, manage to gain enough of an upper hand to get his wee sister out of the house. From there, it’s been easy.

 

He decided he’d be a reporter, so he started writing things and submitting them to local papers, and within a few weeks he was hired. He had his career planned out in front of him, he went for promotions and won them, and by the time he turned twenty-eight last year, he had a house and a car and a girlfriend and a decently-sized diamond ring all ready to drop into her champagne on a trip to Paris. Not bad for a skinny lad from Ferguslie Park. Turns out, if you treat the world like it owes you (because it fucking _does_ ), it has a tendency to cough up its dues.

 

The point being, Malcolm is not used to situations he can’t steer. J is a situation he _cannot fucking steer_.

 

The next time he picks J up, it’s almost midnight. He wasn’t going to do it, wasn’t going to call, but as soon as Kim told him she was spending a long weekend in Belfast for a hen party, he found himself searching his pockets for that scrap of paper. Casual as you like, J told him midnight, by the park, because he had other jobs first, and Malcolm has been unable to get that phrase out of his head for the entire intervening week – _other jobs_. Other men. Other cocks up his arse.

 

Which is fucking stupid, because he obviously knows what J’s job is. He’s probably fucked a hundred strange men since last time, and god knows how many he’s had before that, but the fact that it’s obvious doesn’t make Malcolm any less eager to kick every last one of them to death.

 

As soon as he opens the passenger car door, J tumbles in. He’s dressed in a white shirt, crisp jeans, leather jacket, and while he in no way looks like the street prozzie he is, there’s something dangerously erotic about him, even before he reaches over – without so much as a _hello_ – and unzips Malcolm’s trousers with a horribly practiced one-handed ease.

 

Malcolm drives. He’s taking J back to his own house, which is _stupid_ , the neighbours have a key, and so does his sister, and Kim might come back if her flight is cancelled, but whatever – this whole thing is fucking stupid, so if he’s doing it he might as well do it in spectacular idiotic style. He sneaks glances to his left as Jamie strokes him hard, and tries to remind himself that this, the entire _point_ of paying men for sex, is to remain in control of this unwelcome part of himself, the part that is not included in his plan, but he’s helplessly distracted. J _does_ look freshly fucked, all bruised-lips and tousled hair, Malcolm’s urge to kill rising to new heights when he notices a couple of fading scratches behind J’s ear.

 

“Who was he?” Malcolm asks, before he can stop himself.

 

“Who?”

 

“The last man who…?”

 

“Fuck off,” J snarls, but his hand moves faster, grip tightening a little. The car swerves across the road, Malcolm just managing not to veer into the oncoming lane and offering up a silent prayer of thanks that there’s no one else around at this time of the morning.

 

“Put your seatbelt on.”

 

Bizarrely, J does so, then goes right back to tugging Malcolm off.

 

“What’s your name?” J asks, flashing Malcolm a toothy grin. “I’m not gonnae keep calling you John.”

 

“That’s my name.”

 

“Yeah, yeah. You know how many Johns I know in the real world? Two. You know how many clients I get called John? About eighty percent of ‘em. The other twenty percent are women, they’re more creative.”

 

Malcolm shoots him a glare. Between the handjob and the driving, he doesn’t really have much attention to spare for small talk. Which is fine, because it means he can pretend he isn’t thoroughly lost for words when he looks across at J. He’s got a big-eyed, wild-haired, babyface thing going on, but what really gets Malcolm, what made him stop the first time, what’s making him feel light-headed now, is the fire in those eyes, the intensity and enormity of the _visible_ personality crammed into a stocky wee body, it’s the –

 

“Shit,” Malcolm gasps, sweaty hands sliding on the steering wheel as he forces himself to look back at the road.

 

J is, in addition to Malcolm’s somewhat warped ideal of the perfect male specimen, very good at what he does. He reacts to all Malcolm’s little strangled noises, figuring out fast what he likes and what he needs. Malcolm grits his teeth. He should tell the wee bastard to give it a rest, but he’s so close that he can’t think straight, and there’s no way he can stop this now, no way he can stop any of it.

 

J says, “Come for me, you beautiful, lanky cunt.”

 

That’s not an instruction Malcolm can easily refuse. He does come, all over J’s hand, but the other inevitable thing happens too – his feet slip on the pedals, his hands slide again, he feels his whole body shudder and he feels the car do a horrible little jolt to the left.

 

Then there’s the impact.

 

It’s a lot like being flung out of a catapult into a brick wall, and then dropped unceremoniously onto the floor. A horrible pain rips Malcolm diagonally across the chest, from his sternum to his skull, and his instinct is to flail in a mad effort to do his trousers up; if he’s going to die, he’s not going to be found with his cock out. He can’t quite manage it though, he’s left shaken and sweating as the car skids to a halt, smoke rising from beneath the bonnet, the airbag pathetically half-deployed.

 

The engine pings calmly, and silence settles in.

 

Then, from the seat to Malcolm’s left comes a hideous noise, and he can’t look, he won’t look, he tells himself he’s not going to look, but he’s looking, and there’s J, folded up on himself, head tipped back, making the worst sound Malcolm has ever heard in his life.

 

Malcolm has almost written his entire statement in his head – picked up hitchhiker, swerved to avoid huge dog, no _idea_ where it came from, just leaped out from nowhere, didn’t see the lamppost – when he realises J is actually _laughing_.

 

He’s not just laughing, he’s in hysterics, one trembling hand pointing at Malcolm, the other over his face as he laughs his fucking stupid guts up. Never in his life has Malcolm hated anyone more than he hates J right now, but that really doesn’t explain why he’s laughing too, a low, irresistible belly-laugh that takes hold of him and shakes him until he has to rest his head against the steering wheel because he can’t fucking _breathe_ any more from laughing. J reaches out and sort of pats him weirdly on the shoulder, which just makes things worse, and by the time Malcolm can open his eyes again, they’re red and stinging with tears.

 

The whiplash is setting in too. His neck’s fucked, and he groans, one hand pulling himself back together, the other fumbling for the car door, and he gets it open and tries to get out, but his entire body is made of jelly so he just sort of rolls out onto the tarmac and lies there, looking up at the cloudless night sky. The stars look down on him, judging him; he raises them a two-fingered salute.

 

Back in the car, J howls with irrepressible laughter.

 

And that is, more or less, when he begins to get an inkling just how _fucked_ his life is going to become.

 


	8. Rentboy AU part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I think this might need its own separate story listing soon.

The car is about as badly damaged as Malcolm’s shoulder, which is dislocated, but at least the shoulder doesn’t cost four hundred pounds and the entire weekend to repair. A very nice male nurse pops it back into place, gives him some strong pain killers, and tells Malcolm’s ‘friend’ to make sure he doesn’t exert himself for a few days. Malcolm’s gratitude doesn’t extend to not wanting to push the nurse out of the fourth-floor window for stealing little glances at J when he thinks Malcolm isn’t looking.

 

J stays for the weekend and charges like bull with a rocket up its arse, but for his money Malcolm gets him for most of Saturday and Sunday. It also costs him a couple of cooked breakfasts and two huge pizza dinners, plus half a dozen videos from Blockbuster, though they never actually get around to watching those. On Friday night he fucks J in the bed it took Kim an hour and a half to pick at Ikea, on the sheets she made him choose, and using the condoms she insists on because she read in a magazine that they’re the safest ones you can buy (he finds himself, somehow, explaining to J that she doesn’t _trust_ contraceptive pills, and gets in return the most withering, most _Catholic_ look he’s ever seen, and then finds himself pinned to the sheets with J’s thighs either side of his face).

 

On Saturday morning, J persuades him to try something he’s never done before, not even with the other men he’s paid. Malcolm bites down on the pillow and tries not to look as if _he’s_ the whore as his knees slide apart, his hips tilt, and J pushes deep, deep inside him, and that’s him sold on the idea. He tries not to see the look of relief on J’s face when he tells him wouldn’t mind doing it that way again in future. It’s another degree of lost control, letting Jamie even _suggest_ … but once you’ve got a bloody rentboy in your marital-bed-to-be, does it honest to God matter how the pieces fit together?

 

Saturday night brings J’s decision to fuck Malcolm in every room in his _prissy, middle-class, shortbread-and-Darjeeling house_. Malcolm points out that he’s fucking _working_ class, fuck you very much, that he’s earned all this with his own ink-stained hands (and Kim’s extraordinary hotel management skills), but J just sneers at him and makes him bend over the bath tub, which – well, at least he’s getting his fucking money’s worth, he tells himself an hour later when he’s flat on his back on the freezing cold kitchen tiles with J’s scalding hot mouth around him.

 

J comes and goes, popping out for a couple of hours on Saturday and Sunday, with the excuse that he has to go and look after his mam, though that doesn’t explain why he returns haunted by the scent of a stranger’s cologne. Malcolm tries very, very hard to be rational about that. It certainly helps that J does come back, and kisses him, and asks if there’s an attic they should be fucking in for the sake of completeness (there is, and they do; Malcolm likes completeness too).

 

It’s the most fucked-up thing he’s ever done, and obviously he vows never, ever to do it again.

 

J finally properly leaves on Monday morning with a pocket full of cash and what Malcolm tries not to think of as a _love bite_ on the side of his neck, beneath his ear, where he noticed J had those scratches. Malcolm carefully tidies up. Kim’s plane is due to land at 11 a.m. and she’ll be back in time to meet him for lunch. The used condoms and the empty food boxes go into one big bin liner, which he puts in the next-door neighbour’s bin, and the sheets go in the wash, and everything gets a damn good scrub, from the bathroom tiles to the dining room floor. He picks up the car, and some things for lunch, and the sense of being in charge of his own life settles back in again as if it never left.

 

By the time he hears Kim’s key in the front door, the house is spotless, every trace of Jamie has been removed, and there’s a lasagne (constructed from Malcolm’s home-made pasta) cooling in the oven.

 

Kim finds him at the dining room table with his nose almost pressed to his laptop screen.

 

“Opticians,” she says, kissing him on the head. She’s been saying it for weeks. He’ll go, eventually, when he finds the time.

 

“How was it?” he asks her. “Did your pack of wanton harlots have fun?”

 

She makes a face, but follows it with a smile. “Brilliant, actually, but you know – Shelly threw up all last night, Belinda couldn’t stop crying about some guy from ten years ago, Tracey dumped us for a shag, and we’ve all gone away hating Jane but we’ll have forgotten why in six weeks’ time. How was your weekend?”

 

Malcolm shrugs. “Wrote five thousand words and deleted four thousand. Can’t nail this fucking piece.”

 

“You’ll get it. What smells good? Did you cook? You’re the best, I’m starved.”

 

Malcolm watches her pile food onto a plate. It’s a comfort, having her back, a reassurance that _this_ is his real life, this tall, slim, beautiful girl with his ring on her finger and his lasagne sauce already smudged up her cheek as she eats with the appetite of the three-day hangover before she’s even back to the table. He shoves his chair out and she sits on his lap, and she feeds him a forkful, and he does his best, he tries his hardest, and he almost succeeds in pushing all thoughts of short, black curls and wide, blue eyes, well and truly out of his mind.

 

The problem is, with Kim sitting there on his lap, he can see the smooth, white arch of her neck and the neat shell of her ear. Kim’s buzzing with something Malcolm realises is the prospect of her own hen-do, and she’s full of plans for the future, plans for the week – a double-date, she insists, with Malcolm’s sister, Megan, and her new boyfriend – _oh don’t call him that, love, he’s not that bad_ – plans to redecorate, to see her uni friends in Edinburgh, to visit his mum, and shop, and eat… real things, normal things, and he’s listening to what she’s saying, he really is, but he’s also envisioning the scruffier, stubblier lines of J’s neck, the scratches beneath his ear, he’s seeing where one’s hand would have to curl around for the nails to make those marks right _there_ , and where, if you were to do that, your thumb would naturally come to rest.

 

Malcolm finds himself agreeing to take Kim’s wee niece and nephew to the pictures on Wednesday afternoon.

 

Meanwhile, half a city away, Jamie has an appointment with a doctor.


	9. Hostage Situation at the Foreign Office

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scottishwolves posted a photoset on tumblr illustrating Jamie trapped in a hostage situation, and Malcolm watching from the outside.
> 
> I was very tired when I wrote this, but apparently I decided Malcolm wouldn't sit by and watch forever.
> 
> The art is here;  
> http://scottishwolves.tumblr.com/post/80347184361

After forty-eight hours, Jamie is so dehydrated, so bruised and exhausted, so starved, that he doesn’t know what’s happening. All he knows is, one moment the lunatic with a gun and nothing to lose is facing off against another lunatic with a gun and fucking  _everything_ to lose - and he can only tell any of that from vague impressions, smudged colours in his blurred vision, the newcomer’s stance and tone, his aggression - and the next minute, there’s sirens and people and shouting, and somebody is holding tightly onto his arms. And Jamie’s delusional, he knows it, he’s still in that place where he’s aware of what’s happening to his bound, gagged, beaten and neglected body, but he would swear, in front of a court if need be, that he knows that voice.

Next, there’s darkness, and calm, as he lets himself sleep. He might be in an ambulance. At any rate, he wakes up in a hospital bed attached to a drip, and he’s  _hungry_ , and there’s a detective who refuses to bring him a mars bar or a cigarette and won’t stop asking questions he doesn’t know the answers to.

Then it happens again. The second lunatic, but without a gun this time, is in the doorway shouting threats and abuse yet again, and Jamie  _does_ know him, and he might be sore all over, his ribs might be cracked and his skull bruised and his kidneys all scrunched up and dried out, but he grins. It hurts more than anything, but he can’t stop.

There’s a three-way row between Malcolm and the cops and the nurses. Malcolm wins. The detectives leave, and the nurses check Jamie over, and Malcolm is allowed to stay.

When the nurses are gone, Malcolm sits in the chair beside the bed, and holds Jamie’s hand so their fingers are intertwined. Neither of them acknowledges it, neither says anything. Jamie is putting the pieces together.

Eventually, he says, “You killed him.”

"No."

"I know it was you."

"He’s alive. A couple of rooms down, actually."

"Huh."

Silence filters in again. Carefully, testing the ground for landmines, Jamie rubs his thumb across Malcolm’s knuckles.

Malcolm says, “I  _meant_ to fuckin’ kill him.”

"For queen and country, eh?"

"Obviously."

Silence again. Malcolm looks like he still intends to kill somebody, eyes red, lips thinner and drier than ever, jaw set in barely-contained fury. Something occurs to Jamie.

"The cops didnae want you?"

Malcolm gives a little half-shrug. “You’ve been out for two days. The head wound… There’s security footage, they didn’t need much from me.”

"You’ll be on telly." Even though the thunderclouds in his skull, Jamie finds space to worry about Malcolm in the limelight, his least favourite place to be.

"Nah, don’t worry. Pulled all the right strings…"

That’s okay then. Jamie lets his eyelids flutter closed, but he grips Malcolm’s hand even tighter now that he can’t see him. He hears the chair scrape closer, feels the mattress beneath him dip slightly, to his right, and he falls asleep with Malcolm there beside him, for the first time, but not for the last.

Malcolm doesn’t sleep, but with Jamie out of danger and a bullet still lodged in the pelvic bone of the moron who thought he could hurt him, he can at least rest.


	10. Porn Star AU - prequel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A prequel to the earlier Porn Star AU chapter

Everything’s a bit overwhelming. The lights, the people, the script… he’s read the script, he really has, and it’s brilliant, it really is. The premise is great. _Real_ porn. No boob jobs, no twelve-inch cocks, no fake bodies at all, with sex as relatable and recognisable to viewers as the sort of sex they can and do have, even if the characters are a little unlikely. The storyline is good too, an hour and a half of espionage. Jamie’s character – _if_ he gets the job – is an undercover agent pretending to seduce an older man, a politician, in order to get close to him and extract information. It’s a clever script. There are almost no cheesy lines at all.

 

It’s better than any of the very, very minor acting roles Jamie’s landed so far.

 

But he can’t help hearing his agent’s voice in his head – _you’ll do better with your mouth shut_. He’s never had to memorise a script before, even the one scene he’s highlighted for the audition, and he’s not sure how well he’s got it down. Modelling is his thing, and he does okay. He has the face for it. Specsavers liked his eyes enough to make him their house brand male model last season, and he’s done catalogue stuff too, for department stores like BHS and Jenners, posturing in pullovers and khakis and button-down shirts marketed to men fifteen years older than him. In summer he got the underwear gig with Selfridge’s. His crotch has been picked up and examined by men up and down the country, on the label of their boxer shorts and y-fronts, and that was, apparently, how Sam found him, though she’d smiled when she said it. He’s pretty sure it was actually the Specsavers thing. It’s always the Specsavers thing.

 

However she’d found him, she phoned his agent and invited him to audition, and despite Phil’s advice, here he is, battered script in hand. There’s a dozen other young men in the waiting room, all of them tall, fair-haired, finely muscled. Jamie is none of these things. He claims five-feet and eleven inches on his resume, though he’s fooling no one, and his dark hair is a tangled mess, and he’s skinny, though he’s been at the gym four times a week trying to do something about that. He sticks out like – well, like a small, scruffy bastard in a room of well-coiffed twats.

 

Jamie watches the twats’ numbers diminish as they’re called, one by one, through to audition. He’s third-to-last, and he takes up a position near the door, where he can see and hear what’s happening. Some of the twats are just plain shite, dismissed quickly by the tall woman standing a few rows up in the stalls – that’s Sam, the director. Some of the twats are good, though. One of them seems to strike up a rapport with her, improvising a few lines, but then he’s off too – _we’ll call you_ – and Jamie’s up.

 

He walks to the middle of the stage and shows Sam his best grin. She smiles back and gives him his line.

 

He’s managed about a quarter of the scene when he spots movement, about four rows behind Sam and off to Jamie’s right. There’s somebody else here, watching them, somebody almost invisible in the darkness. Jamie tries to ignore them, carries on, and he’s pretty sure he’s nailing the lines until the previously unseen figure holds up a hand. Sam doesn’t even have to _see_ him to follow his lead, and she asks Jamie to stop.

 

“Okay,” he says, “thanks for fuck all then, eh?”

 

The figure near the back stands, something Jamie is sure didn’t happen in any of the twats’ auditions. And it is a man, tall and slight, with a mess of brownish hair and a fine-featured face. Piercing eyes, Jamie notices, and severe brows, and a cigarette in hand, the end glowing red as he takes a quick drag. Jamie’s hit with a sudden nicotine craving.

 

“Can you improvise?” the man asks. Sam glances at him quickly, then sits down. Jamie shuffles his feet a little further apart on the boards, and nods.

 

“Sure,” he says, “I mean, obviously I can.” He’s never improvised before in his life.

 

“The final love scene,” says the man, “have you read it?”

 

“Aye.” He has, actually. “It’s good.”

 

“I know, I wrote it. Learn it by heart. Come back on Tuesday at –“ he glances at Sam.

 

“Six.”

 

“Six. Back here.”

 

The man moves, fast, trotting down towards Sam, who’s pulled out a diary. When he reaches her, he talks in a quiet, rapid voice, and Sam shows him what Jamie notices is _his photo_ , the one his agent would have provided, the one that got him the Specsavers gig on its first outing. The man takes it, and then he’s away out the door, and Jamie supposes the two other twats waiting outside will just have to try again another day.

 

“Why,” Jamie asks, “do I have to learn the scene if he wants me to improvise?”

 

Sam looks up at him sharply, and Jamie realises he was meant to have gone already. But her face softens, and she shrugs.

 

“Malc doesn’t like to be questioned. Just get your cute arse back here on Tuesday if you want the job.”

 

 

 

“Sam invited you to audition for this piece, but we have two stories in the works; this one, then there’s the hetero piece. I’m supposed to offer you the choice, that was the idea, but honestly, you’re…” Malcolm makes an odd face, wraps his arms around himself and stares at Jamie for a moment. Jamie recognises nervousness in him but can’t quite believe he’s seeing it.

 

He's a bit strange looking, is Malcolm Tucker, tall and wiry and gaunt, with a mad scruff of brownish hair that Jamie would have had cut weeks ago if it was his. He’s not all that much older than Jamie, five or six years at most, but you can tell he’s been in business since his teens. You can tell, by looking at him, that this is a man with long-term vision, and right at this moment the full intensity of that vision is being beamed onto Jamie, as though scanning him to see if he fits, if there might be a part for him to play, literally and metaphorically.

 

“I re-wrote the whole thing,” Malcolm says. “After Friday, after watching you. The character, Cameron – he’s been… revised. Here.” He picks a cardboard folder off the table and hands Jamie a new script. It’s a bit heavier than the old one. More dialogue?

 

“Revised?” Jamie echoes. “What – after me?”

 

“No, not exactly.” Malcolm shoots him one of those piercing looks. “It made me think, is all. Sam deviated from the fucking line – I said fucking _tall_ guys, this guy, he’s meant to be a bit of a pale, aristocratic beauty. Well, he’s fucking not any more, he’s _you_.”

 

“Oh, thanks.”

 

“He’s fucking _Byronic_ now. But anyway, as Sam didn’t give you the choice… if you prefer the hetero stuff, it pays less, but you don’t have to sit on any dicks.”

 

Jamie shrugs. “Aye, well, it’s acting, isn’t it?”

 

“Exactly, so-”

 

“I mean, if I had to _actually_ sit on dicks I might reconsider, but…”

 

Malcolm shoots him another look. Jamie sort-of wishes he’d stop doing that, while another part of him wishes he’d never stop.

 

“You said you _read_ the script.”

 

“I did, aye.”

 

“Cameron does an awful fucking _lot_ of sitting on – you did notice that? I mean, it is the entire _point_ of…”

 

“Well yeah, and I’ve always wanted to ask that, actually. How’d we make it look like the characters are actually fucking?”

 

“Haha. Okay, let’s-”

 

“I mean, I have _seen_ gay porn, and I know we’re going for something a bit different, but it’s fucking realistic, isn’t it? It can’t all just be camera angles…? Malcolm?”

 

Malcolm’s gone oddly quiet. Arms still folded, lips sort of pursed between his teeth, watching Jamie with a very strange expression.

 

“Oh, sweetheart,” he says, after a moment’s contemplation. “I knew you hadn’t done this sort of thing before, but… Christ all-fucking-mighty. _How_ old are you?”

 

“Says on my resume. Twenty-two.”

 

“And you think that… It was a Catholic upbringing you had, was it?”

 

“Aye. And two years of seminary, but I’m well shot of that now. So? Shall we get on with-”

 

“Are you _sure_ you wouldn’t prefer switching to the hetero stuff?”

 

“Nah, need the money. Let’s go, eh? I’ve been practicing the fight scene all weekend.”

 

“I’m not worried about the fuckin’ fight scene. Okay, look. Sit down. Sit on that table.”

 

Jamie perches his arse on the table and tries to sit still, but his leg jiggles of its own accord. He’s always been fidgety. Malcolm watches him again, apparently chewing on his own thumb for inspiration.

 

“Tell me you’ve been with _girls_ at least?”

 

“Well yeah, I’ve just got engaged, actually.”

 

“ _Christ_. At twenty-two? Childhood sweetheart?”

 

“Yeah. Gemma.”

 

“Fucking _hell_.”

 

“So I figured I can draw from that and sort of _adapt-_ ”

 

Malcolm holds up a hand. “Please just stop fucking talking. You’re making my heart weep white blood cells, you’re giving me fucking leukemia, son. Listen, and listen really fucking _well_ , okay? There is no trick. Let that sink in.”

 

No trick. Jamie blinks a couple of times. Malcolm is looking at him with an odd mixture of amusement and horror, just waiting quietly for Jamie to catch up. Which he does, gradually, eyes widening.

 

“Oh,” he says.

 

“Oh,” says Malcolm, “in-fucking-deed. So look, just pop off, okay? Away you go, back to modelling G-strings or whatever it is you and your cute virgin arse do all day.”

 

“Wait, what?” Jamie jumps down off the table. “No, no, I _need_ this job.” If he’s honest, Malcolm’s offering more money than Jamie’s ever seen, even written down on paper.

 

“You’re clearly not _qualified_ , are you?”

 

“I can fucking do _anything_ , okay? I’m good at this shit, I’m a proper fucking actor, I never wanted to be a fucking _model_ , Malc, listen – I can do it. Whatever it is, just give me a fucking chance, I’ll fucking blow you away, pal.”

 

Malcolm smiles as if Jamie just said something funny, but he’s not taken his eyes off him since Jamie arrived.

 

“Ever kissed a man?” Malcolm asks.

 

“No. But I could-”

 

“Of course you fucking could, I’m not asking if you could, you read the fucking script, as we’ve already established. We just don’t need – hey, get back on that fucking table, will you? I didn’t ask you to get down.”

 

Jamie finds himself leaning back against the table, his body apparently moving of its own accord. Malcolm nods, satisfied about something or other.

 

“I’m not fired,” Jamie insists. “You’ll let me try.”

 

“I haven’t even fucking _hired_ you yet. You sign anything? No? So just fucking relax and sit still. I’m giving you a chance. We’ll just have to work on the whole _virgin priest_ thing, eh?”

 

“I was never a priest. They wouldn’t let me.”

 

Malcolm makes an odd little humming noise, and moves closer. He moves in short, sharp bursts, Jamie has observed, like a lizard across a wall. He rests his hands on Jamie’s thighs, a couple of long fingers scratching gently at denim.

 

“Their loss,” he says, softly.

 

“Yeah,” Jamie agrees, “I’d have been a brutal priest.”

 

Malcolm grins a somewhat scary grin. “Yeah, well. I can offer you a fuckton more _fun_ , son. Assuming you pass the next audition.”

 

“When…?” Jamie begins, and then looks down at the hands on his thighs, and back up at Malcolm’s thin-lipped smile. “Oh.”

 

Malcolm kisses him. It’s nothing more than a soft, fleeting brush of lips, but Jamie’s wold tips sideways and he grabs the front of Malcolm’s shirt to steady himself. He expects to see Malcolm leering at him, but there’s a look of gentle reassurance on the older man’s face, and that just makes the sudden giddiness worse.

 

“It’s okay,” Malcolm tells him, one hand moving slowly against his leg. “You start… now.”

 

Jamie blinks rapidly, takes a couple of slow, steadying breaths, reminds himself this is _acting_. He rests his own hand on one of Malcolm’s, leans in, and more or less copies that quick, bare kiss. At an encouraging murmur from Malcolm, Jamie does it again, lingers a little longer, surprised by the sharp, but not entirely unpleasant texture of fresh, short stubble against his skin as he sucks gently on Malcolm’s lower lip.

 

Malcolm gives him clues, hints – when Jamie’s lingering a little too long, when he’s hesitating, Malcolm’s grip on his thigh tightens, so Jamie lets his tongue flick out against Malcolm’s lip, and traces his fingers along the contour of his jaw. Malcolm’s lips part for him almost immediately, the hand on his leg squeezing, thumb rubbing at the inside of his thigh; Jamie is drawn in, buoyed and excited and confused by Malcolm’s blatant lust, and before he really knows what the fuck he’s doing, he’s got a handful of Malcolm’s hair, kissing him so deep, so slow, that he has to remind himself to take a breath, and when he does so he finds Malcolm watching him with something alarmingly _hungry_ in his eyes. That hand is moving, sliding up Jamie’s inseam, and Malcolm finds him half-hard through blue denim and a pair of his year’s supply of free boxer shorts.

 

It’s a thrill, dangerous and forbidden, something he’s never _quite_ allowed himself to think about since the crippling guilt that plagued him throughout his last year of highschool. When he caught his best mate, Kieran, wanking in the changing rooms and the moment that passed between them, the eye contact, how Kieran carried right on pumping his fist as Jamie watched and tried to figure out how exactly he ought to join in – but, in the end, turned away and fled. The church hasn’t had much of a claim on Jamie’s soul for a couple of years, but what little it has left is almost entirely limited to the spicy _edge_ that the guilt adds to the pleasure as Malcolm’s palm rubs against his growing erection. Jamie whimpers, legs spreading, leaning back on the table as Malcolm tongues at his throat, teeth nipping at the underside of his jaw, Malcolm’s desire very obvious, and very barely restrained.

 

Jamie is aware that he’s going to fail the audition if they carry on this way. Malcolm is fucking _sexy_ as hell, but he knows that. He wants to find out what Jamie’s capable of, that’s the whole point – so Jamie pushes him off, ignores the irritation on Malcolm’s face, and shoves him up against the wall of the little studio. The sound from the back of Malcolm’s throat is something like a low-pitched growl, but Jamie decides to ignore him and follow his own instincts. He shoves Malcolm’s shirt up, hands exploring skin, chasing a ticklish trail up his ribs, as he claims Malcolm’s mouth for another hot kiss.

 

Malcolm's whole body seems to shift, everything changes, and Jamie finds himself with a completely submissive, though still incredibly horny, man beneath his hands. He’s a little overwhelmed – he wasn’t expecting so much _heat_ , so much _desire_ from Malcolm when he first put his hand on Jamie’s leg – but he’s good at this. This is why he left the fucking seminary – he loves sex and he’s good at people, at reading them, at pushing their buttons, and Malcolm… well, Malcolm is clearly complicated, but when Jamie slides up against him, gets an arm around him, pulls him close and kisses him, when Malcolm melts beneath him, draws him deeper, gives him more of those little hints and cues – the twitch of his fingers, the flick of his tongue, the subtle cant of his hips - Jamie can feel his anxiety fading away.

 

Of course he can fucking _do_ this.

 

He slides a hand between them, and, with his newfound confidence, unzips Malcolm’s trousers and slips his hand inside. It’s not like touching himself – it’s much more thrilling than that. Malcolm doesn’t have anything remarkable going on, he’s very much what Jamie considers average, but he’s so hot, and so hard, and so responsive to Jamie’s touch, and to be honest he’s a tiny bit worried about the guys he’s going to have to fuck, the ten-inch cocks and all that, so it’s a fucking _relief_ that Malcolm is normal.

 

Not that Malcolm is like anyone Jamie has ever met. He’s slightly worried about _that_ too, but, later…

 

Right now, he’s got an idea forming in his head. He draws back, makes eye-contact, and deliberately flicks his tongue out across his lower lip.

 

Malcolm fucking _whimpers_ , but he draws from some source of strength, shakes his head, and says in an incredibly rough voice, “Just your hands for now, sweetheart.”

 

“But I want to-”

 

“Plenty of time, plenty of time. I,” Malcolm leans forward to kiss him, “want you to learn _slowly_ and _thoroughly_. Use your hands, make me come. Then I’m going to suck you off. Then, next time, you can return the favour before I _fuck_ you.”

 

“Next time,” says Jamie, as his blood reaches the approximate temperature of picritic magma.

 

“Make me come,” Malcolm repeats, and moves away from him, lounges back against the table Jamie was sitting on a few moments before. “Give me the most intense orgasm of my fucking _life_ – or, at least, of this week, let’s not get too ambitious. Then you’ve got the part.”

 

Jamie doesn’t need any more encouragement than that. He moves himself quickly and decisively back into Malcolm’s personal space, kisses him again, and slides his hand back into Malcolm’s underwear, wrapping his fingers around Malcolm’s solid length. He allows himself a couple of wide-eyed, experimental, slow tugs, then with the helpful twitch of Malcolm’s hips, he finds a quick and steady rhythm. He thinks of the things he likes to do to himself, but again, it isn’t really the same. Malcolm’s buttons are in all different places, and Jamie accidentally discovers that a stray fingernail against soft inner-thigh is enough to send Malcolm’s head falling back, his legs sprawling apart, and Jamie is again overwhelmed by the temptation to use his mouth. So he compromises, grabs Malcolm by the collar and tugs him forward, kisses his mouth, then lets his lips wander across stubbly skin, testing, exploring, until he kisses the soft lobe of Malcolm’s ear, and –

 

“Oh _fuck_!”

 

Jamie does it again, and, remembering the nail/thigh thing, adds a gentle scrape of teeth, and Malcolm turns practically fluid beneath him, sprawled back on his elbows across the table, one leg hooking up around Jamie’s hip. It takes all of Jamie’s restraint not to climb on top of him and furiously rut against him, but some integral part of him is focussed on the prize, the job, the money, and Malcolm’s instructions, and, not least, the promise of _next time_.

 

He works quickly, paying careful attention to Malcolm’s reactions, changing the speed, adjusting his grip, rubbing his thumb over the tip, squeezing at the base, palming his balls, and his mind is buzzing with ideas now, and he looks at Malcolm, the man beneath him panting and cursing, _wanting_ him, and he thinks about the things men do together, and he pushes Malcolm’s thigh up and out of the way, and he rubs two fingers against the entrance to Malcolm’s body.

 

Years later, as he sits on the beach and watches the dolphins leap, and watches the sun rise from behind the dark green mountains, he’ll wonder if that’s what sealed his fate – _their_ fates. Malcolm shouts, loud and incoherent, a string of violent curses and broken prayers, and Jamie feels his cock pulse in his hand, stares transfixed as Malcolm comes in a quick succession of convulsive thrusts into Jamie’s slick fist.

 

There’s a lot of it, hot and slick, someone else’s spunk on his hand, and he doesn’t know why but his first impulse is to taste it. He licks his palm; salty, neither good nor bad, different to his own. Malcolm kicks him and calls him a beautifully fucked-up wee cunt, but otherwise seems content to lie sprawled out across the table and stare up at the ceiling.

 

“Where do I sign?” Jamie asks, unable to do anything about his massive, shit-eating smirk.

 

“Dotted line,” says Malcolm. “Later. If you want to. You should.”

 

“I will. I told you, I can fucking do this.”

 

“Yes, you can.”

 

Jamie’s trousers are far too fucking _tight_. He unzips, half in the name of comfort, and half optimism.

 

“Reckon you said you’d suck me off.”

 

“Aye.”

 

“Reckon you need to sit up tae do that.”

 

Malcolm, Jamie will learn, is a contrary bastard. He just rolls onto his front, facing Jamie, still lying on the table, and tugs him close. He grabs Jamie by the belt, tugs his cock out of his boxers, and swallows him down with alarmingly well-practiced skill. Jamie touches Malcolm’s hair, and at an encouraging, though somewhat muffled, moan, shoves his fingers into it and holds on tight. Malcolm’s head moves up and down, and Jamie wants to watch him work, but his eyes flicker closed, and it doesn’t take long _at all_ until he’s crying out from the intensity of it, the warmth, the skilful pulse of Malcolm’s tongue, the way he takes _all_ of Jamie in and swallows around him, and whines with pleasure as Jamie comes, _hard_ , down his throat.

 

When Malcolm lets him go, Jamie staggers back, eyes wide and mind blown, plonking himself in a chair before his knees give out. Malcolm slides his long legs off the table and wipes fastidiously at the mess on his belly, before shrugging slightly and buttoning himself up.

 

He picks up his folder of papers from the table, and on the way out, he stops to rub Jamie’s shoulder, gives it a little squeeze.

 

“Tomorrow, seven o’clock, have dinner with me and Sam. We’ll have the contract ready for you then. Your agent will give you the details.”

 

Jamie can’t really do much except grin at him, and then he’s gone.

 

Outside, in the cold evening air, he slots twenty pence into a phone box, and calls to tell Gemma that she’s marrying a fucking _actor_ now.


End file.
